[Neo] Atheists: How Much Lack of Belief is Required to be an Atheist?

Again, you continue to use an "illegal substitution" of word "belief" with "faith" in the great game of theological debate.

 

Thats totally 100% not true.
Cant wait to hear your explanation for this one.

 

Atheism, theism, and agnosticism all have defintions.

Where you fit in with that really can only be your decision. These words don't have gradiants or measurement in their definitions.

You can't decide to unilaterally change the definition in the way you want to.

In fact, you can't even depend on someone answering the "which are you" question with deeply considered, lasting seriousness.

 

why are you accusing me of neoatheist posting tactics?

 

btw dont look at me, I did not choose 'lack of belief' so you dont need to direct your post to me, you need to direct it them!

my arguments regarding LoB are all based in how stupid, incorrect and frankly laughable its usage is.
1)
a·the·ism
noun: atheism
disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

the neoatheist mantra

lack
noun
noun: lack; plural noun: lacks
the state of being without or not having enough of something.

therefore:

2)
a·the·ism
noun: atheism
disbelief or not having enough belief in the existence of God or gods.

Its the neoatheist swamp, not mine.

So far everyone of them have argued against their own position in this thread and demolished LoB.

What you said actually agrees with my position, and pounds another nail in the LoB coffin, your post was misdirected to me and should have been directed to one of their posts.

Lob is indefensible.

 

LOL

and we can carry that yet another step further!

belief
noun
noun: belief; plural noun: beliefs

an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.

therefore:

3)
a·the·ism
noun: atheism
disbelief or not having enough acceptance that God or gods exists is true.

 

That is not what I stated. "Reject" can mean either "failure to believe" or "believe the opposite", but it cannot mean both at the same time, which is what would lead to the sentence you constructed. That's called equivocation, and it's a fallacy.

There is a light switch for every person which says "this person believes in the existence of God". The light switch gets switched on if and only if the person accepts God's existence as true, we call those theists. Light switches however need to be either off or on, so anyone else (including agnostics and people who believe there is no god) are in the other pot, the pot for whom "this person believes in the existence of God" is off. Light switches are examples of negations (they have to be in one of the two states, there is no excluded middle or contradiction), so if one side it theist, it is appropriate to call the other side a-theist.

There is a separate switch which says "this person believes that God does not exist". People for whom that switch is on are called strong atheists.

If "reject" means failure to believe, then rejecting "God exists" means flipping the first switch, making you a weak atheist. In that case, rejecting "God exists" does not mean accepting the opposite.

However, we can also say that "reject" means to believe the opposite, i.e. flipping the second switch. The last paragraph then stops to be true, and 'rejecting "God exists"' is no longer the negation of "believing God exists", i.e. it is no longer equivalent to "to not believe God exists", and it is no longer the criteria that makes you an atheist (since you can also be an atheist in the weak sense).

Either way, this gives us no insight that spelling it out doesn't, it just introduces an unnecessary opportunity for equivocation.

 

Cute. Obviously completely wrong, but still cute, like a puppy trying to figure out why that elongated stuff at his rear is following him everywhere.

Google "emergence". The concept, not the series. Maybe you'll be able to figure out by yourself why are your inferences wrong.

 

I suggest you take your own advice!

Maybe you will figure out why Im correct, someday.

 

to reject means you do not believe a proposition is true. (at least in everyone elses world)

yeh failure to believe is disbelieve, rejection of a proposition being true is automatic acceptance the proposition is false.

LEM says propositions are true or false, not some otherworld phantom you imagine exists.


So how we doing on how much belief does someone need to lack to officially be an atheist?

 

'in denial' means you reject a true proposition as false.

 

very simply stated, if someone offers you an apple and you 'opt' not to take it, you rejected it, ie refused, ie failed, (ie insert whatever negation you like here n.., n...), to accept the apple. A mountain of word salad metaphors, ephemisms, or analogies will not change the fact you chose the opposite. Which I would assume it sould be crystal clear but I am sure someone here will require clarification because they are not able to deductively reason the meaning without a direct statement, it applies exactly the same way to the acceptance of a proposition, if it not accepted as a true the false condition is accepted as true.

 

that's totally 100% not true. Of course you can wait.

 

obviously you are not be familiar with what that means lol

 

A rock can fail to believe (in fact, it fails to believe anything at all), but it can't believe any opposites. A rock fails to believe altogether, but it is not clear to me that it can be said to reject the proposition because of that.

Agreed, but a proposition is not the same as belief in the proposition. "The pope believes in the existence of God" is a different proposition from "God exists". It's the former that makes the Pope a theist. You are right in saying that reversal of the latter turns "there is a god" to "there is no god", but it is reversal of the former that turns someone into an atheist. The two statements reverse under different circumstances though. The former reverses upon the act of belief in the existence of god, not around whether god exists in ones world view (since ones world view may not be decisive on the topic).

The answer remains that accepting God's existence as true makes you a theist, and by the law of excluded middle, anyone else is (by the weak definition) atheist.

I agree with the first line here. However, in this case, what you end up with is a lack of apple, not the opposite of an apple, whatever that might be. If we pick a more relevant example (as in one that actually has an opposite), you have have love for something, you can have hatred for something, or you can have neither. Not having love doesn't mean you have to have hatred, you can have neither. Indifference is not 50% hate and 50% love, it's simply neither.

This logic seems to implore you to say that agnostics are impossible, who accept neither statement. That seems like an incorrect description of the world to me.

 

In denial means to deny the belief as true. Kind of like how you deny atheism.

 

well something sure is obvious, but it ain't my familiarity with english.

 

sure tell that to any logician, and record it so we can all get a good laugh!

correct, yes it shows your unfamiliarity with english.

 

Where did you learn to be a logician?

 

in school.
where do you learn how to spin everything?

 

Racing school. Did you become a logician by taking logic 101?

 

and they didnt teach you stay off the ice when your opponent is on dry pavement,..... that explains why you screw around in fruitless rewind repeat pursuits like pretending you have case, that will in the end get you 100% nowhere.

 

a rock cant fail what is impossible for any rock to accomplish.

Still trying to destroy LEM eh....

Yes LEM holds.

As has been demonstrated that is a violation of LEM.

Again, I wont go there with you because you cant even get the most simple 2 position binary logic problem correct, there is no way you can handle more complex logic without some facsimile of understanding of how logic works.

proposition: "God exists".
acceptance is the belief God exists.
rejection is the belief God does not exist.

 

Sure it can. I can't fly, if I tried, I would fail. My inability to fly does not make my failure to fly not a failure. But fair, one might say that failure requires intent, and that's not what I'm referring to, I just want to express not doing something, as opposed to doing the opposite.

No, just applying it correctly to the various propositions at hand.

One is the LEM applied to the proposition "God exists", and the other is the LEM applied to the proposition "this person is a theist". You have only demonstrated that you haven't successfully considered the argument I'm making.

Well, we have more than one proposition at hand, and the agnostic is a good example that shows that. If your position relies on ignoring certain evidence, that's not a good look for your position.

Proposition: "This person believes that God exists".
acceptance is identifying that person as a theist.
rejection is identifying that person as an atheist.

I don't particularly mind the version that you presented, but it's the version I presented that determines whether someone is an atheist (in the weak sense). Flew's position relies directly on the proposition I presented.

 

a rock cannot try, bogus example, it cant fail at something it cant even try geesh

you can try and therefore fail.

It requires capacity to try.

You arent, you violate LEM

rejection of God exists = atheist
acceptance of God exists = theist
stanford U articulated that exact point for you

I have, you are in denial, and insist in violating LEM.

agnostic does not violate LEM, your constantly adding it is a strawman to this argument,

acceptance and rejection are true false, not weal strong unless of course you want to continue to violate LEM

Then you need to come up with a proposition that does not violate LEM